Cookbook author and NY Times columnist Mark Bittman drives straight to the heart of our artery-clogging, planet-polluting love affair with meat in Sunday’s NY Times with a piece entitled “Rethinking the Meat Guzzler.” Bittman, best known for his sophisticated-yet-simple recipes in the paper’s Dining In section, trades boiling water for the roiling waters of the Week In Review, where he bemoans the horrendous consequences of industrialized meat production.

Bittman notes that the average American eats half a pound of meat a day–roughly twice the global average. But the most jaw-dropping statistic is a UN estimate that “30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production.” It all adds up to rampant deforestation, polluted rivers and streams, and a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases, not to mention assembly-line animal abuse and diet-related illnesses.

Rising food costs may soon force us to eat less meat, but if not, Bittman writes:

“perhaps the combination of deforestation, pollution, climate change, starvation, heart disease and animal cruelty will gradually encourage the simple daily act of eating more plants and fewer animals.

It’s great to see the eat-less-meat message occupy such prominent real estate, and I’m always thrilled to see the UN’s landmark 2006 study Livestock’s Long Shadow get a shout-out. Factory farming is an abomination that violates the laws of nature and simple human decency. Nobody needs to eat that much meat. Give it up or go grass-fed. As we retrovores like to say, the future is in the pasture.

Check out the Humane Society’s Factory Farming campaign to learn more.